


Admiration

by JohnCousland



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 08:55:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12553832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JohnCousland/pseuds/JohnCousland
Summary: Ser Landry wanted to clear the smear on teyrn Loghain's name. But he would not give an elf the honor of duel. His attack would give Frey Mahariel an opportunity to reminisce on the past, and look onto the path ahead.





	Admiration

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hurrricane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hurrricane/gifts).



“The quicklings are big, Frey. They are big, they are stronger… You really have to watch when dealing with them, you know? Because if they get you… You are done. Bear hug. Crack, crack, crack.”

The way Frey looked at Tamlen was not the way the latter was expecting. Those eyes were so… soft? That was not the admiration Tamlen wanted to incite on his spoiled friend. He wanted the other kind of admiration, with fear, and awe, and…Tamlen was sure Frey considered himself Elgar’nan in the flesh. “Hey, Frey, are you listening?”

And not only was he listening, his eyes were glistening, and his lips had a silly smile that actually made Frey look like he was looking up, even if he had almost a full foot over Tamlen. Frey’s nods were slow and long, a voiceless response that infuriated Tamlen.

He held the neck of Frey’s tunic and pushed him against the trunk of the gigantic tree, one of the thousands that dotted the Brecilian forest. Frey’s back hitting the bark did not make the smile fall off his face, specially when Tamlen’s was so close to his. Mahariel could smell the leaves the other elf used to chew. It smelled like old, blurred memories. “Are you paying attention, Frey?!”

“I am, I am”, Frey said in an amusing tone. “You were telling me how the quicklings can make your ribs pop.”

Tamlen did not reduce the distance, and kept his brows furrowed as he spoke, letting Frey savour the herbal breath as it came in the waves of his words. “Cracked ribs make you bleed inside. It’s no joke, Frey.”

“Oh, no?”

“No. And I know, because I have faced three of them at the same time.” Silence lingered, filled by Frey’s smile, silly and sly at once. Tamlen tried to keep the mean face, but when he noticed he was not going to be able to, he let Frey go with some chuckles, and gathered the bow and arrow he had dropped when he pressed the other elf against the tree. 

“So, as I was saying, you cannot let them grab you. The Elder and the Keeper protect you too much, but you never know, right? I have to fend for myself, so I had to fight. Don’t let the quicklings grab you.”

\---

The man’s hands were choking Frey with all their strength, spit drooling from his lips, raining over the elf’s face. Yet the Warden smirked, showing teeth that have not yet been cracked, toughening his neck to a point the man’s grasp could not do much. Frey had allowed the human to get to this point - sitting astride him, with both hands around the elf’s neck. And now Frey had a leather garrote around the men’s neck, and enjoyed the sight of strangling the strangler, as the human tried in vain to make his ever weakening hands win the fight against the elf’s neck.

Frey’s long, beautiful red hair had been gone for a long time. The scars crisscrossing his scalp should have warned the man to stay away. He would flee from the wicked smile if he could, were it not for the garrotte keeping him in place and out of breath.

“Come on, Jimmy!” One human in the circle that surrounded the fight shouted, as he slid a knife through the dirt floor of Denerim’s market to the man on top of the elf. Members of the City garrison were among the observers, and exchanged wary looks among themselves and the man who stood in the centre of the onlooking crowd. A noble man, clearly, geared in the traditional Fereldan full plate, with a perpetual frown on his thick blonde brows,.

“Yeah, Jimmy”, Frey said with a raspy voice, taking a sideways glance at the knife. “Come on. You wanna grab that knife, don’t you? Come on, Jimmy boy.”

Jimmy looked at the elf beneath him with despaired eyes, sweat droplets joining the drool lines coming out of his mouth. He simply couldn’t breath, and his grip on the Warden’s neck was a joke. But if he let the elf go… Fuck it. He mustered what little energy he had in his muscles and lunged for the knife, leaving Frey’s top and rolling over the weapon, readying it to protect himself. He was sure Frey would roll over. But Frey was still lying down, chuckling with the saddest victorious grin on his lips, one hand in each side of his rib cage, moving his fingers along his ribs as if counting them. “Not a single crack, you fool”.

And then he gave Jimmy what Jimmy expected: a fast, true stomp on the neck after having leaped to his feet as if he weighed nothing, as if the Warden gambeson weighed nothing, as if Jimmy sitting on top of him and choking him moments before was nothing. Jimmy’s neck cracked, hands and knife fell limp across the man’s body.

Frey took a long, deep breath, as he assessed the situation around him. The neck cracking had made the circle of shems one step broader. He gathered the garrote off of Jimmy’s neck and encircled it around his own. And with a slow movement, his daggers flashed out of from their sheaths.

\---

“...And then I ran towards the wall of their house, and that had the quicklings wondering, right? They were not expecting that I could run so fast, let alone that I could climb to the roof. And when I climbed to the roof, they tried to come after me!”

Tamlen has understood that admiration, the silly and aloof one, was all that he was going to get. It was not the one he wanted. But at least, it made Frey look up to him. Frey, the one everyone in the clan looked up to. Tamlen actually could use this weird, affectionate admiration. It felt good. Not the right good. But good, anyway. Fair, for a change.

“So I took my bow, knocked the first arrow, and down went the first quik’. The other ones were so scared! They went and got their crossbows!”

\---  
Denerim market had stopped to see the Grey Warden elf be attacked by that man. The so called Jimmy, one of many in the crowd who wanted to avenge teyrn Loghain’s name. But after Jimmy’s death, most of that crowd wanted distance from the elf who had it in his eyes. They stepped back, and left Ser Landry’s and his closest, armored men standing against Frey.

“You are filth for having killed filth, Warden! It is what you expect of an elf. Get him, men! I will not give this knife-ear the honor of a duel.”

The men, five of them, dashed forward. Although, for swift Frey, they were stumbling ahead with the awful clinking of metal chain links all over them. Their hauberks made them sitting ducks, slow as fat pigs. Frey, clad in the Warden’s gambeson, reinforced with ironbark plates, could not fear what could not touch him. Before the anger would set in, he actually felt sorry for the Fereldan people who would become darkspawn food soon. Their warriors were not hunters, and thus, simply prey.

\---

“They shot their crossbows at the same time, Frey! I leaped like Andruil from the roof, avoided their bolts, and while I was in the air, I knocked two arrows at once and loosed! Splish, splish, both arrows in between their eyes! Like that!” Tamlen was more excited about his story than Frey. Frey, who nodded along, and loved how flustered the other elf got when telling these fantastic tales of encounters with the quicklings.

\---

The first of them charged with sword in both hands, high above the head, shouting for honor and glory, and died with a stab to his neck before the sword could be swung down. He fell back without letting go of the weapon, gorging blood, still waiting for the glorious moment to swing his sword down.

The second one lunged forward swinging an axe from which Frey ducked. The axe hit another’s shield, got stuck, and allowed Frey to pierce him in the armpit four blurred times. As the second’s body fell down, it brought the axe stuck in the shield with him, leaving the third one exposed. Frey spinned away from the thrusting sword and kicked it away from the third attacker. This one died with one dagger hitting square in each eye, at once.

The other two were more careful, and were keeping a wary, defensive stance, one in each side of the blood bathed elf, shield held high and swords ready to thrust the dancing killer away. Frey did not hesitate. He dashed towards one of them, and slid on the dirt past the man before the sword found him. The daggers crafted by Ilen were the shooting star’s tail that hamstrung the man and rendered him helpless. The last man ran away when he saw his partner’s tongue slide in a bloodfall through an open throat.

Ser Landry had fled as well, and Frey would not let that prey go. He darted on the direction of the knight’s footprints, but didn’t need to go too far to find him. The tracks led on to an alley, and Frey stopped at the corner, listening. The smile he once gave Tamlen curved his lips. He could hear the noble’s heavy breathing, and Zevran’s soft giggles.

“You went away before avenging Loghain’s name, my lord.” said Zevran, moving a strand of hay-like hair from Ser Landry’s sweaty forehead. “How will poor Loghain be, with such mud strewn across his honor? Will he ever be able to sleep again?”

“Move away, elf!” Ser Landry shouted, pushing against Zevran’s shoulder only to find it no longer there and, with a little push from the Antivan, fall down on the muddy ground. The knight drew his sword as the got back to his feet, and raised his eyes to find Frey standing in front of him, arms crossed, with a lewd Zevran encircling the Dalish’s waist with his arms. “We forgot to tell him that we are maricons, mi amor. Fags are smearing Loghain’s name!”

Ser Landry’s response was to run for his life. He did not curse, he did not reply, he simply shouted and ran again, as fast as he could. Zevran kissed Frey’s cheek, and ran after the knight, looking back at Frey briefly to see what the other elf would do. “Aren’t you coming?”

\---  
“Aren’t you coming?” An angry Tamlen said looking over his shoulder at Frey, who was lagging behind as they pursued their mark. 

“On my way,” said Frey, with the same silly admiration in his eyes. Tamlen frowned, shook his head, and cursed under his breath. “Don’t lag behind!”

\---  
“On my way,” said Frey, with the same silly admiration in his eyes. Zevran sighed and winked at the Dalish. Frey was still not used to feel that way. To receive the same admiring looks he gave Zevran. It was all new to the Antivan as well. “Just don’t lag behind. You are my shadow, remember? ”, said Zevran.


End file.
